


All Those Thousands of Whys, Ifs and Hows

by sequence_fairy



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-03 00:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13329321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/pseuds/sequence_fairy
Summary: When he can't sleep because his mind is a whirligig of thoughts half-finished and ideas half-cooked, the Doctor paces the corridors of the TARDIS.





	All Those Thousands of Whys, Ifs and Hows

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a timepetals prompts drabble theme. The theme that week was 'restless'.

When he can’t sleep because the darkness of his room is oppressive and his mind is a whirligig of thoughts half-finished and ideas half-cooked, the Doctor paces the corridors of the TARDIS, while Rose is curled up under her duvet. He walks the length of the hallway between her room and his, hesitates in front of her door for the fiftieth time in the last hour, and moves on again. She’s sleeping, he doesn’t need to disturb her just because he can’t sleep. She’s quiet. Probably dreaming of something pleasant.

He walks away down the hall towards the galley, and stops in the middle of the room. He turns in a slow circle, and then gets the kettle out and opens a cupboard to get a mug, before deciding halfway through boiling the water that he doesn’t want one anyway. He stands in front of the fridge with the door open for a while next, undecided about whether he wants to eat anything they have in.

(He doesn’t)

The Doctor leaves the kitchen and heads for his lab. There’s an itch under his skin that he can’t quite scratch and maybe tinkering with something or running a quick experiment will help. He gives up on that plan after soldering his fingers instead of the circuits three times in quick succession. He tries the library next, scanning the shelves for the text on multi-system temporal waveforms that he’d picked up the last time they were somewhere with a big enough used book store. He makes it through three paragraphs before he slams it shut and shoves it back onto the shelf, between Agatha Christie and her 52nd century counterpart.

He leaves the library and takes a roundabout way back to Rose’s room, stopping at the swimming pool to wonder if a swim would settle his nerves. He gets as far as tugging his tie loose before he changes his mind and spins on his heel to head back to her room. He makes a pit stop at the medbay to do something about his singed fingers, and gets half-way through running a scan on the green goo that had stuck to his shoe when they’d been running through the swamp on Glax 9. He puts down the scanner when his mind loops back to the image of Rose running with him, her laugh a bright, jubilant thing that made him feel like he weighed nothing.

The Doctor leaves the lab, and walks past his own room. He stops in front of her door again, hands shoved into his pockets to keep from knocking. He rocks back on his heels, and takes a deep breath. He’s about to turn to leave to try warm milk when the door opens and Rose peers out at him. Her hair is mussed from sleeping, and she’s covering a yawn with one hand while the other scratches at the back of her neck.

“Come inside,” she says, and reaches out for his hand. The Doctor follows. Rose gets back into bed, and pats the place beside her on the mattress, “you need to lie down. You’re all restless.”

“I don’t want to disturb you Rose,” he says, quietly. He can see the way her mouth curves into a sleepy smile.

“The only thing that’s disturbin’ me is you pacing up and down the corridor out there.”

The Doctor is suddenly glad that Rose’s room is so dark. She can’t see the flush creeping up his neck.

“Get in here Doctor,” Rose says, with an air of finality that stops the Doctor’s protestations in their tracks. He hears the rustle of bedclothes and the sigh Rose makes just before she falls asleep. He could leave now, she’s asleep and he knows he wouldn’t be able to sleep, would toss and turn and wait - the itch under his skin he’s been running from all day? It’s gone. His mind has quieted as Rose’s breathing has evened out and the Doctor sinks down to sit on the edge of her bed.

He shrugs out of his jacket and leans down to undo his shoes before tugging off his tie and unbuttoning his oxford. Stripped down to t-shirt and his trousers, he gets up to kick them off and pull off his socks before stretching out beside her. He listens to Rose breathe, and unconsciously, the rhythm of his own breaths slows to meet hers and the Doctor feels his eyes grow heavy.

Just before he falls asleep, he feels her hand curl around his.


End file.
